Stardust
by xahra99
Summary: Written for the Mass Effect kink meme.Thane/Samara, for the prompt 'Thane/Samara, gentle tender sex   biotics.' One shot. Complete. Non-explicit. Rated M.


Stardust

A Mass Effect 2 fan fiction by xahra99

Thane/Samara, for the masskink prompt 'Thane and Samara: gentle tender sex + biotics.'

Turned out more as 'Thane and Samara engage in exquisitely polite conversation about life, the universe and everything. Also, they bone.'

The Normandy cut through deep space like a knife, heading for the Omega-4 relay. The engines groaned with power, pushed to breaking point as the ship forged ahead. Stars flamed and flickered outside the Normandy's windows.

Thane Krios stepped through the doors that led to the starboard observation deck and hesitated as he saw Samara. The room was austere in its simplicity; bare except for a computer terminal and chair. Samara sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the terminal. A ball of biotic energy flared between her palms.

"Thane," she said, half in pleasure and half in surprise. "Welcome." She quenched the biotic orb and rose fluidly to her feet.

"I did not wish to interrupt your meditations," Thane said swiftly. He turned away from Samara and the vast picture window, back towards the cool corridors of the ship. "I can go."

"No," Samara said. Her pale blue eyes were as inscrutable as always. "I am glad that you are here." She inclined her head towards the wheeling stars. "Sit with me for a while."

Thane followed her lead and sat beside her on the cushioned floor. They both stared out at the view.

"What do you see?" Samara asked him quietly.

Thane blinked, eyelids sliding smoothly along the horizontal. "Stars. Much like you, I imagine." He paused. "Although it's true that my vision has been altered, the stars are much the same."

She nodded. "I am truly glad that you called in tonight. There is only so long one may stare comfortably into the abyss before it starts staring back." She sighed. "I have lived nearly a thousand standard years, and facing death never gets any easier."

"That's very true," Thane said reflectively.

"I will miss only my children. I always tried to teach them well." Samara said. "You yours, I suppose."

Thane twitched one shoulder in a hanar nod. "I worry about Kolyat, but I think that he will find his own way. He reminds me so much of myself at his age, and Arashu only knows I made enough mistakes. But this crew, this mission…this commander…I can think of no better way to end my life."

"It will be a good death," Samara agreed.

Thane shrugged. "You know that I am dying anyway," he said matter of factly. "I am sure that the news has travelled the ship by now."

Samara nodded. "As are we all," she said. "But for now you are alive."

"That is a very asari outlook," he said.

"We have learnt to enjoy the company of others while it lasts. The longest-lived drell or human is like a single flame: you all burn brightly, but not for long." Samara rested her hand on one azure-freckled cheekbone. "I can think of no better people to spend the last night of my life with than the crew of the _Normandy_."

Thane nodded in response. They sat in silence together for a while as the frozen stars wheeled past. "The view is beautiful from here," he said eventually.

"Yes. We all seem so small. The vastness of space puts things in perspective. I was thinking…"

"What were you thinking of?"

"I was thinking that I have made many bad decisions in my life," Samara said.

"As have I."

"A thousand years, of course, offers the opportunity to make many mistakes." She paused. "I hope am not about to make another."

"If you are," Thane said, "we won't have to suffer the consequences for long. What are you thinking?"

"If we have to die…why not embrace eternity together?"

There was a short silence, broken only by the hiss of the air conditioning and the slow burn of the engines. "I thought you celibate," Thane said at last.

Samara shook her head. "No. It makes life much simpler, but no, I am not celibate."

He glanced sidelong at her. "You know I loved my wife."

"I do not ask for love," Samara said. "A justicar has little time for it. I would not wish you to think I offer more than that I am capable of. I can offer you a moment of eternity, but no longer."

"Then I accept," he said.

Samara smiled and bent forwards to kiss him. Thane stopped her with a finger to her lips. "Don't," he said. "Drell skin can cause your race hallucinations."

Samara reached forwards with the very tip of her tongue to touch his mouth. She swallowed and blinked. "By the Goddess," she said. "You are not wrong."

"No more." He placed a hand flat on her breastbone. "I wish to have you here, not floating out to sea."

Samara wiped her lips with the back of her hands. "How do drell kiss?" she inquired.

Thane pulled her forwards, so swiftly that Samara's battle-trained muscles tightened. He placed cool hands on either side of her face and rested his forehead on hers. She felt the ridges of his scales pressing into her skin. "This," he said. "What about asari?"

"We are a sadly conventional species," Samara informed him. She curled her hands under his gills, brushing the crimson fronds with the lightest of touches, and Thane inhaled thickly.

"I suggest that you save that for later," he said slowly, "unless you want this encounter to be over very quickly indeed."

Samara raised her hands to her forehead and removed her justicar coronet. The strip of red sardonyx folded neatly into a thin slip and she tucked it into her pocket.

Thane watched her with wide ink-black eyes. "I have never seen you without your crown," he said, touching her temples.

"Not many have," she said, smiling at her reflection in the wide window. "I am no justicar tonight. I am simply Samara."

She reached up and slid the zip of his jacket down to reveal the sculpted planes of his chest. His skin was tacky to the touch, his body stockier than the asari form, lean and hairless with longer arms and legs than she was accustomed to. Samara found endless pleasure in the small differences between races; the featherlike hair of humans, the coils and twists of turian facial tattoos and the massive bulk of krogans.

"All the species of this galaxy," she said. "We're not so different, after all."

He shrugged, kissed her again and lowered her to the cushioned floor as gently as if he held a million credits in his arms.

Because she respected Thane greatly, Samara let him. She pinched the zipper of her suit between thumb and forefinger and drew it down past her navel. The suit peeled open and Samara shrugged her arms out of the sleeves. Thane took her hand and kissed her fingers. She traced the remnants of webbing between his fingers while he stroked her nails, curious at these barbaric versions of claws.

His suit was much easier to remove.

She discovered that his amphibian appearance was misleading, that he was nothing but pure whipcord muscle under froglike skin, that drell had no navels but that they _did_ have other things in common with every other species that she had ever encountered. As Thane cupped her breasts she wondered if his species even had mammaries. He rolled her nipples gently between his fingers and she gasped at the trace of suction and wondered if his species had ever walked on ceilings like the ship-lizards.

She carefully did _not_ wonder what he thought of her body, or her species. Asari had a way of evoking the most attractive attributes of a partner's race. Human lovers praised her lithe body; turians her tightly clasped hair.

Beauty, she had often thought, was where you found it.

When she judged that enough time had passed she concentrated and sent a tingle of biotic power coursing down his spine. He gasped but did not pull away. She smiled.

"What was that?" he said.

"Males have a fascination with the maidens of my kinds. I learned a few things in my youth."

"I am afraid that I have no biotics." He rolled over and slid a hand between her thighs. "It seems that I must do things the old-fashioned way."

She let him. Much later, eyes half-closed, she ran her hands up his armor plated spine as he eased into her.

Asari were adaptable by nature, and Samara knew what she was doing. She had done it many times before, but the first moment always took her by surprise. She held the moment close, cherished it. Hardly anything surprised her any more.

She had forgotten her biotics in the pleasure of their mutual touch; now she used them again. She brushed the back of his neck gently and curled tendrils of pure energy around his chest to caress him as her eyes turned black.

She held her lover close and whispered "Embrace eternity," as the wave crested, and then they were obliterated by the sheer weight of the universe.

Samara held stars cupped in her hand. She ground her fingers together and they ran between her fingers like pearls. Thane's hand tightened suddenly on her hip and she heard him groan through her ecstasy.

"_Arashu_-"

They were drowning deep in a black sea, knotted between life and death in a delicious, sinuous curve. Samara threw back her head and laughed in delight. She felt Thane, far in the distance, still holding her hand.

She drew a deep breath and saw the stars wheeling behind the curved window of the Normandy. "We are stardust," she breathed.

The wave crested, broke in a flood of white-hot light and as abruptly as it had begun, their climax was over. Samara rolled over, raised her arms above her head and stretched luxuriously.

Thane was sprawled out on his back beside her, pale green skin shading to grey at the edges. He looked dazed. "What was that?"

"That," she said, "was the smallest drop of the universe."

"It is more beautiful than I ever expected," Thane said. He rolled onto his belly and ran his hand down over her ribs, dipping over the curve of her waist. "And your eyes-_Kalahira_, your eyes- like pure obsidian."

Samara shuddered. Several cultures had superstitions about black eyes. "I'm sorry," she said crisply. "It-"

His fingers traced her hipbones. "They're beautiful. Bright eyes are one of the most attractive features among my people." His fingers walked lazily over her skin. "Thou art beautiful, my love. Fair as the moons, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners."

Samara recognized a quote when she heard one, but she was flattered none the less. "You are a poet," she said.

"It is scripture," he said.

"Then I find your scripture more attractive than most I have heard. And I would hear more."

Thane blinked, his black eyes veiled for a moment by mint-green lids. "My love," he began, more self-consciously this time. "My love, who art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stars. Come with me to the desert. Let us get up early to the trail. Let us see if the prey does flourish. For there I shall give thee my love."

She smiled as slowly as honey. "Your world sounds very beautiful."

"Kahje? It is, but it is not our home. But it is pleasant enough. Maybe when this is all over-"

He let the words hang in the air.

"I would very much like that," she said. "When the galaxy is saved, and all this is over."

"There will be time then," Thane said. He slid down her body and rested his head in the curve of hip and waist. His hands moved over her thighs, and Samara suppressed a gasp.

"Embrace eternity," he murmured. "Isn't that what you say when you kill?"

"Sex and death are not that different. Both involve an ascent to a different plane of existence."

He snorted. "I doubt that death will be that pleasant."

"You never know," Samara said philosophically. "But whatever happens, I am glad that I had time to meet you, Thane Krios."

"And I you, Samara."

"You are a righteous man-"

"Drell," he interrupted.

"A righteous drell, then," she corrected. "And believe me when I say that that is one of the highest compliments a justicar can give. I hope that you will not take it amiss if I say I wish that I had met you when we both were young. You would have made strong daughters."

Thane inclined his head gracefully, and Samara felt the scrape of scales over flesh. "I am honored."

They lay in silence for a while and stared out at the stars. After a while Samara said, "It is very quiet aboard the ship."

"Yes. I wonder what the rest of the crew is doing?" Thane asked.

Samara focused. "Miranda and Jacob are having sex in the briefing room," she said precisely. "Kelly Chambers and Jack are together in the hold. Shepard is in the Commander's cabin with Garrus Vakarian, Joker is in his bunk with EDI, Mordin Solus is in the laboratory taking a well earned rest and Grunt is in the cargo hold, feeling, as I imagine, rather left out."

Thane blinked. "Really?"

"It is a natural reaction," Samara said. "We have nearly a standard day before we reach the Omega-4 relay."

Thane stretched, a stretch that to Samara's asari-accustomed eyes seemed to go on for far too long and involve far too many joints to be comfortable. "Well, seeing as we have time-how about another turn? Eternity won't last forever, after all. We'll have to fight soon enough."

"I hoped you would say that," Samara murmured as she pulled him to her.

"You are welcome," Thane replied.


End file.
